RUSSIA: Comings & Goings

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To deft and dapper Ivan Mikhailovich Maisky, for eleven years Russian Ambassador in London and lately dean of the diplomatic corps at the Court of St. James's, came a puzzling promotion last week. Three weeks after a routine return to Moscow to bring his superiors up to date, it was announced that he had become a Vice Commissar of foreign affairs, would not return to London.

In his new post "Little Maisky," as big & little Britons fondly call him, might:

> Get lost in the bureaucratic maze of the Narkomindel (signifying that his tireless bouncing around London had displeased his superiors).

> Become a power in shaping Anglo-Russian relations.

In either event, it seemed likely little would be heard of Maisky for a while.

To London in his stead goes youthful (39), fair-haired Fedor Gusev, former head of British Empire matters in the Foreign Commissariat and lately first Russian Minister to Canada. A graduate of Leningrad University, he entered the Foreign Office in 1937, now speaks fluent English.

Diplomatic gossips seized on these changes to revive a prediction, first heard last Christmas, that Maxim Litvinoff would soon be withdrawn from Washington. Litvinoff has been in Moscow since May. Mme. Litvinoff is still in the U.S.